Smart Mouth and Killer Hands
by Sidalee
Summary: A McKono AU in which Steve is a hitman and Kono is thief. Multi-chaptered story with various and less ordinary background pairings.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing you recognize…

**A/N: **The things is that I had this urge to write but I just can't handle anything that remotely canon so I came up with this AU. I know that you are not big fan of the genre but hey, give it a try, 'kay? It's borderline crackfic and kinda cheesy romcom and a little noir-ish…things like that. Also it takes place mostly in Europe coz I live there and you know, great art happens here.

The title is from a Kings of Leon song, True Love Way.

No beta was harmed, all mistakes are mine, merry still goes 'round.

Tell me what you think!

* * *

It starts in Paris, because of course it fucking does.

They run into each other, quite literally, in the middle of the _Pont de l'Archevêché_, and it's so fucking poetic Mary Ann nearly falls of the barstool, laughing so hard when Steve tells her the story. Steve had been walking back to where he was staying in the 4th arrondissement, having left his most recent mark bleeding out in a swanky apartment overlooking the _Boulevard Saint Germain_.

His hands stink of disinfectant, and he still has his Browning Hi-Power tucked into the inside pocket of his suit when he stumbles into the tall, gorgeous woman on the _Pont de l'Archevêché_, and falls in love.

She is wearing skintight black dress, a cropped leather jacket and boots with blood-red soles. She has long dark hair that tumbles messily around her shoulders, and Steve wants to fist his hands in it and pull. He curls his hands around her shoulders for a bit longer than necessary while setting her back on her feet, and starts to stumble his way through an apology in French, when the woman smirks.

"_Anglais_?" she raises an amused brow.

"Is it that obvious?" Steve asks, and he's still standing far too close to the woman, keeping his hands on her shoulders as people stream around them, and the Seine drifts by beneath them.

"Your accent is horrible," she laughs.

She hollows her cheeks around a cigarette Steve hadn't realized she'd been holding, and Steve goes weak at the knees.

In a manly sort of way.

Steve smiles at her, and after a moment, the woman smiles back.

"Steve," he says, sticking out a hand, and the woman regards him for a minute before transferring the cigarette to her left hand and shaking Steve's. Her grip is firm, and Steve wants to undress her and never let her go.

"Kono," the woman says, taking another drag from her cigarette.

"Kono," Steve says, rolling her name across his tongue and the woman shoots him a look from beneath dark eyelashes. Steve grins at her again. "Can I buy you a drink, Kono?"

Kono tongues her cigarette to the side of her mouth and shrugs. "I thought you'd never ask."

They walk off the bridge into the 4th arrondissement, and Steve follows Kono past Notre Dame to a crowded little bar that Kono knows that sells Italian food. They order four different kind of pasta and white wine and make small talk.

Steve learns that Kono was born and raised in New York City, and that she moved to Paris to go to school and never left. She studied art restoration and she works at an art gallery doing just that. Steve tells Kono that he grew up in a suburb of Chicago, but currently lives and works for an investment firm in London. He tells Kono that he's in Paris on business and it's nowhere near the whole truth, but from the way Kono is smirking at him over the rim of her glass he thinks that maybe he's being lied to as well. He'd press the issue, but Kono's hand has been on his thigh since they ordered their second round of drinks, and it's really not that important, anyway.

The November sun sets slowly over Paris, painting the streets gold, and Steve pays the bill and they walk on, meandering their way back to Steve's hotel in an unspoken agreement. They get distracted on the way there by another bar, where they sit until the sun sinks further behind the horizon and the moon raises itself over Paris. They huddle together outside and Steve shares Kono's cigarettes and they drink red wine that stains their mouths red.

When they leave, Kono pushes Steve into an alleyway, presses him against a wall and yanks him down by his tie so that she can kiss him. Kono kisses like it's a fight and Steve leans into it and lets her win. He slides his hands under Kono's jacket and curls them around her waist, squeezing until Kono pants into his mouth and pulls back.

"Tell me your hotel is nearby," Kono hisses, and Steve dips his head to bite at Kono's neck and then nods, pulling her breathlessly forward.

They stumble through the heart of the Marais to Steve's hotel, a little place tucked down an unassuming street. It's pricey, classic French decadence tucked behind an unassuming façade, but beautiful. Steve loves Paris, and he has a hunch that Kono's skin will look golden against the rich, green brocade the bed in his room had been draped in.

The concierge is indifferent to their rushed progress through the lobby, barely looking up as Kono pushes Steve into the tiny elevator and kisses him again while the doors close. Kono's teeth are sharp on Steve's lip and she slides clever hands under Steve's suit jacket. Steve reaches clumsily for her hands, while keeping one firmly clasped over Kono's hips and tenses when the palm of Kono's hand brushes over the barrel of his gun.

Kono smirks wickedly against his mouth.

"An investment banker?" She murmurs, throwing Steve's earlier words back at him with an amused drawl.

"You're wearing a pair of brand new Louboutin boots," he whispers into Kono's ear and takes great pleasure in making her shudder. "I've never met anyone working in art restoration who could afford that kind of thing."

"Maybe I'm just really fucking good at my job." Kono pulls back, still grinning.

"And maybe I am too." Steve counters, and pulls Kono into his room.

Kono sprawls on the bed while Steve undresses, folding his suit jacket haphazardly and tucking the gun back into his suitcase. She takes off her boots when Steve stands in front of her, and drags her dress over her head, revealing sharp hips and collarbones and what seems like acres of golden skin. She's smirking when Steve manages to meet her eyes, and she reaches for the clasp of her bra one-handed, and beckons to Steve with the other.

Steve goes.

In the morning, Steve wakes up slowly, opening his eyes to the bright sunlight. His body aches in a warm, and pleasant sort of way that lasts until he stretches out one arm and meets nothing but cold sheets. He sits up slowly, taking in the rumpled blankets and indented pillow that still smell faintly of the perfume Kono had been wearing and swallows around the sudden lump in his throat.

He makes his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and maybe to shave too, and it's only when he's wandered back out into his empty hotel room to get dressed that he realizes that the door to his balcony is wide open, and Kono, the beautiful minx, has stolen fucking everything.

His suitcase, which he had left closed and locked in the closet, is sitting on the low sofa in the middle of his room, wide open and mostly empty. He reaches into it in a sort of daze, skimming his hands over the concealed pockets where he keeps weapons and currency. Both are empty. Steve unzips them anyway, just to be sure, but the stacks of euros, his fake passports, plane tickets, silencer, and gun are all missing. So is the heavy pocket watch he had bought on a whim the last time he had been in London.

And most of his clothes.

And the bottle of _Glenfiddich_ he had rolled into his socks.

Steve runs his hands through his hair and takes several deep breaths before turning to the rest of the room. His suit from the night before is still on the chair he'd dumped it on, probably wrinkled beyond belief. His watch and wallet are both gone, but the cheap burner phone that he'd bought before flying to Paris is still there, probably because it's a piece of shit.

Steve sits down heavily on the bed – cold on both sides now – and scrubs his hands over his face.

"Shit," he says with feeling. "Shit. Fuck."

He sighs and then levers himself up to get dressed. He puts his suit back on, shoves the tie into his mostly empty suitcase and goes downstairs with his phone to charm a cup of coffee out of the woman who runs the café on the corner.

When he's caffeinated, and back in his room, he digs the phone out of his pocket, swallows his pride and calls Mary Ann, who picks up with a curt:

"What the fuck do you want?"

"I need a favour."

Mary Ann heaves a sigh.

"I'm on a roof in Texas, waiting for some fucking oil tycoon, I don't have time for your shit, Steve."

"I met a girl and she got the jump on me, and now I'm stranded in Paris," Steve says all at once, like ripping off a band-aid. There's a moment's pause and then Mary Ann has to hand the phone to Danny she's laughing so hard.

It takes about five minutes for her to calm down, during which time Steve glares at the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and discovers that Kono stole a pair of his shoes as well. He's somewhat impressed.

"Okay, okay," Mary Ann says finally, hiccupping as she comes back on the line. "So you're stranded in Paris. What the fuck do you want me to do about it?"

"Wire me money so I can get the fuck out of here, sis," Steve snaps.

"No can do brother," Mare says, and Steve is going to strangle her the next time he sees her. "We're going to need to make a pretty speedy exit once we're done here. We're going to ground for a couple weeks, no radio contact, nothing."

"I'm going to strangle you," Steve tells her, and he can hear Mary Ann shrug against the phone. Danny rants in a forced quiet voice in the background and Mary Ann hums into the receiver.

"I've gotta go; our mark just walked out of his meeting. Danny says you deserved it being your usual reckless idiot self and that you should call Jenna."

Steve growls, and Mare hangs up on him.

Steve spends an hour gritting his teeth and cursing younger sisters, asshole best friends/brother-in-laws and beautiful thieving bitches who are great in bed, and then he calls Jenna.

In less than an hour, Jenna sends him the address of a café that they can meet at, and when she turns up she draws Steve into a tight hug and hands over a briefcase that contains identification, plane tickets, credit cards, and a Beretta.

"Jenna," Steve says, snapping the case shut and tucking it under the small table they've settled at. "If Lori wouldn't punch all my teeth out, I would kiss you right now."

Jenna smiles brightly at him, but dims a little at the mention of Lori's name.

"Where is she, anyway?" Steve asks, "You two are usually joined at the hip."

"She's in Warsaw," Jenna says, and pouts. "She'll be back in a week, but that's practically forever. I don't sleep that well when she's not there."

"What is Lori doing in Warsaw?" Steve asks, pushing Jenna's éclair closer towards him and reaching for his latte.

"I'd tell you," Jenna says with a small smile, "but then I'd have to kill you."

Steve shrugs. "That's fair."

Jenna takes an indecently large bite of her éclair and then leans towards Steve with mischief in her eyes. "So. Tell me about the girl who stole all your shit."

Steve groans and covers his face with his hands.

"She was beautiful," he says, "we ran into each other on the _Pont de l'Archevêché_, and then she spent the night at my hotel, and when I woke up she and all my valuables were gone."

Jenna laughs, a loud and bright sound that makes the people sitting in the tables near theirs look their way.

"Was it worth it?" she asks, after a minute of silence, her eyes shining behind her glasses.

Steve grins at her.

"Oh, absolutely."


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing you recognize…

**A/N: **Thank you for the warm welcome guys! I'm so happy that you like this little story of mine even if it's totally opposite of the actual show. I think there will be at least two more chapters. Or three. I'm almost finished with the whole story. Whatever.

Tell me what you think!

* * *

_If you walk out on me_

_I'm walking after you_

_Another heart cracked in two_

_I'm on your back_

_/Foo Fighters/_

_..._

Steve is in Stockholm when Jenna calls him, shadowing a mark through a series of boutiques in Östermalm. Nobody is supposed to have the number of the phone that's currently vibrating in his pocket, but Jenna has never really been one to play by the rules.

"Hey," he says into the phone, following his mark back out into the street, and turning up the collar of his thick wool coat with one hand against the brittle wind.

"That girl from Paris," Jenna says without preamble. "Her name was Kono, right?"

Steve stumbles over a loose cobblestone, has a momentary (and delicious) flashback of silky smooth thighs, and snaps "_What?_" into the phone.

"Was her name Kono Kalakaua?" Jenna continues, unruffled.

Steve splutters.

Kalakaua.

It sounds uncomfortably like a Hawaiian name. What are the fucking odds?

Fuck.

"We didn't get around to exchanging last names," he manages, and he can hear Jenna smirking through the phone.

"Tall, slender," Jenna says, undaunted, "dark hair, brown eyes, nice ass?"

"Why the fuck are you asking me this?" Steve hisses, ducking haphazardly through a crowd to catch up with his mark.

Also tries to ignore the butterflies going crazy in his stomach. Manly butterflies, with thigh holsters and shotguns of course.

"Because someone just stole a Klee from the Tate Modern in London," Jenna says calmly like she's giving update on the weather and Steve huffs.

"And?"

"God, you're thick," Jenna sighs. "And? Steve, it was _her_. Your one night stand with the nice ass and the sticky fingers is named Kono Kalakaua, and she's an art thief. She's wanted in half a dozen countries and there's an incredibly grainy photograph of her plastered all over the BBC right now, because she stole a fucking Klee."

Steve comes to a stop in the middle of the street, and three Swedish people walk straight into him. "… She's in _London_?"

Jenna sighs explosively across the receiver and Steve winces and keeps walking. He has a job to do: now is really not the time to be thinking of how it's only a quick flight to London from Stockholm.

"Is that really the only thing you retained from what I just told you?" Jenna asks and Steve can hear the eye rolling too. "And she's not going to be in London much longer. A bloody Klee, Steve. She's going to need to lay low for a while."

"Lay low where?"

There's a pause and Steve follows his mark into the lobby of a swanky hotel and takes a seat on one of the couches, while his mark heads for the elevators.

"You're gonna owe me," Jenna says, finally, but Steve can hear the sound of fingers tapping across a keyboard in the background of the phone call. Jenna has always been a sucker for a love story.

"Anything you want," Steve promises, loosening his tie with deft fingers.

"I want a crate of _kanelbulle_," Jenna says immediately. "Fresh _kanelbulle_."

"Done."

"I'll text you when I know more," Jenna says, and then. "There are cameras in the stairwells of that hotel, just FYI."

"Noted," Steve says, filing the information away for later, and recalibrating his getaway plans. He stopped questioning how Jenna knows what she knows a long time ago. "Thanks."

The job is done before midnight and Steve cleans the scene quickly and efficiently, and then walks straight out of the hotel into a cold midnight in Stockholm. His own hotel is located in Södermalm, and he walks there, willing the night air to cleanse his mind of the thoughts of dark eyes and sensual lips. He has no idea what he'd even say to Kono if he saw her again. Or if Kono has even the remotest desire to see him. The whole leaving while Steve was asleep and stealing everything of value isn't the best sign, but Steve has always been an optimist.

Yeah, sure.

.

.

Two days later, he's tramping aimlessly through _Gamla stan_ when he gets a text from Jenna that says simply: '_**Tokyo**_.'

He's speedwalking back in the direction of his hotel when he remembers that there are something like eight million people in Tokyo, and texts furiously.

'_Tokyo is a very large city care to narrow it down'_

He's back in his hotel, throwing things into his suitcase when Jenna texts him back.

'_**Shibuya**_.'

'_STILL NOT HELPFUL'_

'_**God, you're the worst 007 ever'**_ Jenna texts. _**'You are the George Lazenby of James Bonds.'**_

'_Fuck you'_ Steve types while scrambling for the charger for his phone. _'I'm at least roger moore'_

'_**In your dreams.'**_ Jenna responds. _**'Try Omotesando.'**_

Tokyo is really fucking crowded. Steve had been there once before, on a job, but the sheer bustle and noise is completely overwhelming. Shibuya is so packed with people that he knows that finding Kono is just not going to happen.

He puts out feelers though, as best he can, meets with his underworld contacts over sushi and the occasional cup of coffee, and asks if any of them have seen the art thief. None of them have, which means that Kono is good at hiding when she wants to be, or that Jenna's intel is wrong.

And Jenna is never wrong.

Steve spends two weeks wandering Shibuya, his heart jumping every time he sees a tall woman with dark hair, before he gets a text from Jenna that says:

'_**Belgium. Brussels. Musée Rene Magritte.'**_

So he flies to Belgium, because he's never been, and he's a big fan of chocolate and waffles. Brussels is beautiful, and he spends most of his time wandering through various art museums. He's in the _Museé Rene Magritte_, just like Jenna said when he sees her out of the corner of his eye: a flash of brown hair and knee length leather coat but by the time Steve makes it out of the museum, she's nowhere to be seen.

Jenna's next text says '_**Barcelona, Las Ramblas**_', and Steve buys a train ticket and goes to Barcelona.

Barcelona is bright and warm, and Steve eats paella and drinks sangria and walks the length of La Rambla over and over again, examining the human statues and keeping an eye out for Kono.

He's been chasing Kono for over a month now, thanks to Jenna's help, and it's probably verging on creepy. At least that's what Danny shouts daily at him over the phone. Sometimes he puts him on speaker and gangs up on him with Mary Ann. On days like that Steve leaves his phone on the bed and goes for a walk and wonders when Danny will notice that he left.

He still doesn't know what he's going to say when he finally catches up to Kono – or if he will ever catch up to Kono, because damn, when that woman doesn't want to be found, she can't be found. Jenna is the best, and even she is working off of nothing more than educated guesses and grainy CCTV footage.

He's been in Barcelona for six days, working on his tan, and eating dulce de leche doughnuts from Lukumas when Jenna texts him in the middle of the night.

'_**Traced her back to London'**_, the text reads. _**'Trail goes cold at Paddington station, sorry.'**_

Steve thanks her and arranges for a half dozen fresh doughnuts to be delivered to Lori and Jenna's apartment in Paris before booking himself a plane ticket.

.

.

Steve loves London, loves the rain and the people and the culture. He's called it home for most of the past decade, and he keeps an apartment in Notting Hill for when he's not gallivanting around the world chasing pretty girls who steal priceless works of art.

The first thing he does when he gets back to London is take a cab to his flat, which is covered in a thin layer of dust, and smells musty. He throws the windows wide and takes the hottest shower he can stand, before lying down in his own bed and sleeping for eighteen hours. When he wakes, refreshed, he dresses and goes to buy himself a latte from his favourite café.

Refreshed, and happy to be home, he takes a cab to Paddington Station and stands still in the middle of the chaos, sipping a paper cup of milky tea and watching the people who walk by. If Kono was here when Jenna texted him that was already two days ago, and she could have gotten on a train and gotten the hell out of dodge, but Steve's instincts tell him that Kono's still in London. It's like there's an edge to everything that there wasn't before – London feels sharper, like a knife to the throat, and Steve revels in it.

And maybe it's because he's been living out of suitcases in hotels across Europe for the past month or so, chasing a woman who seems to be made largely out of Steve's memories and smoke, but the air feels charged, and it feels like it had in Paris, when they first ran into each other on that bridge.

And it really shouldn't surprise him when he's walking home later that night and familiar hands shove him against a wall and press a blade against his throat, but he drops his shopping all over the alleyway anyway.

Kono's hair is pulled straight back, away from her face, and her cheeks look more hollowed than they had in Paris. Steve's hands twitch at his side, eager to scoop Kono back into them, and Kono presses the blade against his throat and stares Steve down. She's terrifying, and Steve is painfully turned on.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear Danny's voice, calling him an idiot in at least four different languages.

"How long have you been following me for?" Kono hisses, and Steve swallows carefully.

"Since Tokyo," he says quietly. "Shibuya."

Kono's eyes darken, and she readjusts her hold on the hilt of her knife.

Steve tenses.

He's about sixty-five percent sure Kono isn't actually going to stab him, but it's always good to be prepared.

"Why?" Kono spits. "Why have you been following me?"

Steve opens his mouth, and then closes it, because what he's about to say makes him sound like a pretty huge idiot. Kono raises an eyebrow, and Steve looks down, away from her glittering eyes.

"Why did you leave in Paris?" He says, instead of what he'd been about to say, which is: _'I've been following you because I've got a really embarrassing crush on you, and I'd really like to take you on a date.'_

That makes Kono pause, and she stares at Steve for a long moment before taking the knife away from his neck and stepping back.

"I don't do awkward breakfasts after one-night stands," she shrugs, and something twists in Steve's chest.

His heart, probably.

"It didn't have to be a one-night stand," he mutters.

Kono cocks an eyebrow at him, and says, incredulously: "Did you follow me halfway across the world because you wanted to ask me out to dinner?"

"No," Steve says balefully, and Kono smiles, a real smile this time, and it makes Steve's heart jump in his chest again.

"I'm flattered," Kono says, smirking, and Steve can't decide whether or not he wants to kiss her or go into his flat and die of embarrassment.

"Flattered enough to let me take you to dinner?" Steve asks, because false bravado has always been his defense mechanism.

Kono shakes her head, but she steps close to Steve, who tenses for another knife to the throat until Kono winds her fingers around Steve's neck and kisses him instead, and she's warm and tastes faintly of cigarettes and oranges, and she pulls away far too quickly. Steve blinks, dazed, and by the time he's collected himself enough to try to follow Kono, the she's already disappeared into the shadows at the end of the alley.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing you recognize…

**A/N: **Well, we reached the middle of this crazy story. There will be one more chapter now I'm almost sure. And dunno why but now I really want to write a true noir story, with Steve and Danny in long trench coats and maybe fedoras, Catherine playing the femme fatale who walks into their office one day, Chin the cryptic bartender and Kono the cigarette girl who helps out Steve and Danny.

Also I'm kinda sad that I couldn't fit Chin into this story anywhere. But I have another idea, kinda similar to this, where he'd run a goverment agency with our crazy ohana.

Anyway, thanks for all the lovely reviews, all the alerts and favs. It's a pleasure to write for such a darling audience.

Tell me what you think!

* * *

_Desperate for changing_

_Starving for truth_

_I'm closer to where I started_

_I'm chasing after you_

_/Lifehouse/_

Steve spends the next month trying to forget.

Kono has made it more than clear that, while enjoyable, their fling in Paris was just that: a fling. The knife to his neck in the alleyway made that abundantly clear.

"You'd think that the whole stealing-all-your-shit in Paris would have made that clear," Danny drawls with disdain making a sharp gesture with his beer bottle, when Steve shares his thoughts on the Kono situation.

Steve flicks beer caps at him.

Mary Ann just rolls her eyes at them.

The odd pair is back from their deep cover and they are crashing on Steve's pull-out couch indefinitely. They alternate between making fun of him and acting as his wingmen. They go out one Saturday to watch rugby, and Steve gets drunk on cider and nearly takes an attractive brunette home. They're outside, kissing under the street lights and trying to catch a cab, when Steve looks down, realizes that he's clinging to a drunk Kono look-alike and that's not really fair to anyone involved.

He hails a cab for the woman and pays for it, makes his excuses, and gets slapped across the face for his troubles.

He wakes up the next morning with a hangover and a spectacular scratch under his eye, which earns a painfully long rant from Danny, and Mare laughs at him for half an hour straight.

"It's really not your year, is it?" Mary Ann gasps, finally, and Steve ignores both of them in favour of drinking all the coffee in the apartment.

It's business as usual after that, more or less. Mary Ann stops pushing slim brown-haired women at him when they go out, and Danny doesn't make too many jokes about Steve being celibate.

He thinks it's time for them to find a place, preferably on the other side of the globe.

Or at least the city.

Steve takes a job in Dublin, and then one in Morocco. He comes back to London from Morocco with a tan, craving strong tea and rainy days, which London delights in providing him with. He goes out with Danny and Mare and comes home alone, and he tells himself that he's getting over Kono. He has, at least, stopped jumping every time someone who looks remotely like Kono crosses his path.

He's doing just fine, and then Jenna calls him.

It's late, which means that it's either an emergency, or Jenna is drunk. She drunk dials Steve once or twice a month, leaves him long rambling messages, or talks to him for hours about Lori and Paris, but tonight, her voice is clipped and sharp. Steve is awake and reaching for the knife under his pillow before he can think about it.

"You still mooning over that gorgeous thief?" Jenna asks, and Steve would hang up on her, but she isn't teasing.

Steve does a quick check of his surroundings and eases his bedroom door open to verify that Danny and Mary Ann are still asleep on the couch, alive and safe, if snoring (Mare) and drooling (Danny).

"Yes?" Steve returns to his room and starts to get dressed with only one hand, keeping a firm grip on the hilt of his knife.

"Good," Jenna says, and her voice softens. "Because I think she's in trouble. She tried to pull a fast one on these big deal, fucking terrifying art dealers. Bad people, sooner kill you than look at you, you know the type, right?"

Steve does know, and his insides turn cold at the thought. He reaches for his shoes, his gun, and his jacket, moving efficiently in the dark, focused on getting dressed so he can get out and find Kono.

"Where is she?"

"They pulled her out of her apartment two days ago. They've got her in a warehouse in Birmingham."

"Two days?!" Steve hisses, and Jenna hums down the line.

"I only just heard about it, I'm sorry. I'm sending you the address now." Steve's phone beeps against his ear, and thank god for Jenna, Queen of the Geeks.

"Thanks Q," he says, scrawling a note on a post-it and sticking it to Danny's forehead, before booking it out of the door, and taking the stairs down to the street at a run.

"Anytime, Moneypenny," Jenna murmurs into his ear in a soft, concerned tone. "Good luck."

Steve hangs up and slides his phone into his pocket. The trains aren't running this late at night, and he thinks he might lose his fucking mind if he had to sit patiently on a train while it made its way to Birmingham.

He slips down his street instead, pulls a wire out of his pocket and checks that the street is empty before breaking into the car. He slides inside and hotwires it, sighing in relief when it purrs to life beneath him. It's a nice car, slim and black, and he pulls out of the spot it had been parked in and guns it down the quiet London streets.

It's still hours away from dawn, and the centre of London is mercifully quiet. He drives in silence, only flicking the radio on when the thoughts in his head become too loud. These bastards have had Kono for nearly two full days. The address that Jenna sent him is for some sketchy warehouse and who is to say they didn't just kill Kono, dump her body and get the hell out of dodge?

It's been two days.

Two bloody days.

Steve tightens his fingers on the steering wheel, turns the radio louder to drown out the dread in his stomach, and follows the signs leading out of London.

Dawn is just breaking on the horizon when he makes it to Birmingham. He calls up the GPS on his phone and braces it on the dashboard, following the directions Jenna had provided him with, and feeling more and more unprepared for whatever lies ahead.

It's possible that he had been too hasty. That he should have waited for Danny and Mary Ann or should have called some friends in London to help him. He has no plan, besides getting in, saving Kono and getting out.

Alive, hopefully.

He parks on a street a few streets away from the warehouse. It's a sketchy neighborhood, even the buildings look unfriendly, but it's still early, and the streets are empty. Steve turns off the car, checks his gun, and steps out into the cool morning.

He has no fucking idea what he's doing. He's just one man, with one gun, and a thing for unruly art thieves. There is a very good possibility that he's going to get killed. There is also a very good possibility that if he survives this and Kono survives this, Kono is just going to run away again and go back to being beautiful and distant and living a life of thievery.

Or maybe she'll shoot Steve this time.

Steve blinks hard, shakes his head to clear it, and starts walking towards the warehouse.

It's nondescript, and there's nothing but silence inside. Steve slides his gun out of his pocket, and walks carefully around the building, looking for an entrance. There's a door in the back, firmly locked, but the lock is rusting and Steve gives it one hard kick and manages to break it. He lets himself in, and steps quietly.

It's very, very quiet inside, and it doesn't take him long to find Kono. There's a space in the middle of the warehouse, cleared of all the boxes and other sorts of detritus, and two men with thick arms and leather jackets. It's so cliché that Steve would laugh if Kono wasn't tied to a chair a handful of meters away from where the thugs are drinking coffee. She's tied with thick rope that seems to be the only thing keeping her upright. She's listing dangerously to one side, her chin to her chest, and her bare feet are bloodied. Steve takes a few, silent steps closer, and he can see that there's blood on Kono's face, too, matting her long hair and dripping onto the yellow dress she's wearing.

Steve is suddenly, and entirely furious. He lets out one sharp breath through his nostrils and the sound echoes in the empty space. The thugs with the coffee freeze and one of them reaches for the gun tucked into his waistband.

Steve steps out from behind the racks of shipping containers he's standing behind, a manic smile stretching across his face. He fires, clipping the first guard in the shoulder and ducking back behind the shipping containers when the second guard draws his own gun with a shout.

He runs, drawing their fire, ducking behind containers and firing at them whenever he gets a clear shot, anything to keep their bullets and their fists away from Kono. He gets the first thug with a lucky shot, straight to the thigh, and the man goes down and stays down. The second man fires and the bullet tears into the wall inches away from Steve's shoulder. He ducks and rolls away, firing blindly in the man's direction, when there's a scream of pain, and a thud.

It's so sudden that Steve looks down, half expecting that he's the one who cried out, but there's no blood on him. He raises his gun and steps forward, back into the emptied space in the middle of the warehouse. The second man is sprawled on the concrete floor, down for the count, the ropes that were binding Kono to the chair are pooled loosely on the ground, and Kono is standing unsteadily above the second thug, holding what looks like a jagged piece of coat hanger.

She raises her makeshift weapon when Steve steps out into the clearing, lowering his gun in disbelief. Something like amazement flickers over Kono's face, beneath the bruises and the blood, and Steve's heart aches.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Kono spits out a mouthful of blood , clutching the twisted piece of wire despite the fact that it looks like she's having trouble remaining upright.

Steve flicks the safety on his gun. "I was…I'm here to rescue you."

"Why?"

"My friend called me, and told me that you were in trouble. And I couldn't… I had to…"

Kono looks like she can't believe that Steve is real. "So, what, you stole a car and broke into this warehouse and shot a man?"

Steve hesitates and Kono's eyebrows climb into her matted hair.

"Fucking hell," she mutters. The piece of wire in her hand clatters loudly on to the cement floor. "I owe you one."

Steve tucks his gun back into his holster and they look at each other for a long minute that stretches awkwardly between them. Kono is listing to the side again, but she manages a cocky smirk.

"So, you got in here, did you have a plan for getting out?"

And Steve would smile at the Star Wars reference, but Kono's knees buckle and he has to rush forward to catch her. Kono's head lolls against his shoulder just as his phone begins to ring, and he props Kono up while sliding it out of his pocket.

"BIRMINGHAM?!" Danny shouts in his ear as soon as he gets it open, and Kono groans. She's turned a chalky shade of pale, and Steve heaves her up, against his shoulder while Danny continues to yell at him.

"You fucking idiot, you could at least have woken us up, we could have provided backup instead of acting as the getaway driver and…"

"Getaway driver?" Steve repeats, heaving the warehouse door open and making sure that Kono's head doesn't hit it as he gets them both out.

"Yeah, I stole a fucking car to come and pick up your stupid ass from Birmingham and drag you back to London where we will form a plan and then we can go storm the fucking warehouse…"

"How far away are you?" Steve asks, "I've already done it, I got her, but she's bleeding pretty badly, and she passed out a little while ago."

There's a moment of silence before Danny blows up.

"What?! Jesus fucking Christ, please don't tell me you stormed a fucking warehouse on your own, Steven, I swear to god…"

"There were only two guards," Steve mutters, "and Kono took out one of them. It's fine."

"It's not _fine_, they could have killed you, you ungrateful son of a bitch." Mary Ann bellows from the background and Kono stirs against Steve's shoulder.

"But they didn't, and I need you to come pick me up, because I need to get the fuck out of here and try to bandage her head wound, okay?"

"Head wound," Danny mutters. "It's not even seven yet, fucking hell."

"How far away are you? I just texted Mare the address."

Danny swears colourfully while Mary Ann fumbles with her phone and then sighs. "Give us fifteen minutes. Get the fuck away from that warehouse and don't get shot."

"No promises."

Danny swears at him again and Steve closes his phone and sets Kono down. She sways and grabs Steve's shoulder. He winds an arm around her to keep her upright.

"Can you walk? We should get out of here."

Kono grunts at him and takes a couple of long minutes to just breathe. Steve fits his hands around her ribs and hopes that she hasn't been kicked hard enough that she's bleeding somewhere where they can't see it.

When Kono moves forward, and Steve moves with her, hurrying them down the street as quickly as they can. The city is stirring, and walking away from a warehouse with torn clothes and bloodied faces is probably the most conspicuous things that they could have done.

Danny and Mary Ann come screeching around the corner in an unfamiliar car about twenty minutes later, just as Kono is slowing down to a crawl, and Steve is starting to get agitated, checking over his shoulder every other minute for the men he's sure are following them.

Kono's guard goes back up when the car screams to a halt in front of her, her hands clench into fists despite the fact that she's practically dead on her feet, and Steve would find it endearing if Kono weren't still bleeding from her face.

"It's okay," he says, "it's my sister and my brother-in-law."

They get out and Mare stands guard while Danny helps Kono into the backseat with Steve following her in. There are at least four sawed off shotguns thrown haphazardly on the seats in the back, along with a messy selection of lockpicks and a grappling hook, of all things.

Danny pulls away from the curb and frowns as Steve tosses the arsenal back into the front, hitting both Danny and Mare in various places in the process, so he can try and keep Kono upright.

"I didn't know if you'd have it under control." Mary Ann explains with a shrug.

"You three," Kono slurs quietly, from against Steve's chest. "You three are so fucking weird."

They ditch the car when they get back to London, and Steve takes off his shirt and wraps it around Kono to conceal the bleeding as much as possible. A wide-eyed housewife watches them carry Kono up into Steve's apartment, but she seems more fixated on Steve's bare chest then the way Kono is bleeding through the button-up they'd forced her into, so he figures they're in the clear.

They manage to maneuver Kono into the claw-footed bathtub Mary Ann had scored at an auction a couple of years ago, and Danny fetches bandages and iodine and the rest of the first aid kit while Steve runs the water, and starts un-buttoning the shirt he had lent to Kono. He's peeling the fabric away from her shoulders when she catches his wrist and twists. Steve swears, loudly, and Kono blinks at him. Her eyes are unfocused and there is blood matting her hair to her forehead but her hands on Steve's wrist are steady.

"I'm still armed," she croaks, letting her eyes slide closed. "Don't try anything."

"You are the stubbornest bitch my brother has ever brought home," Mary Ann says from over Steve's shoulder, and when Steve moves to elbow her in the stomach, she ducks out of the way.

"You're wearing PJs, anyway," Danny says from the doorway while Steve leans over the side of the tub to adjust the temperature of the water. "Where are you hiding weapons?"

Kono, bloodied and gorgeous, and half-collapsed in Steve's bathtub, smirks at the three of them and reaches a shaky hand up to pull a slim blade from her tangled hair.

"They never think to check the hair," she says, and lets the blade fall onto the tiles in the bathroom with a little clinking sound. Mary Ann whistles and leans into the bathroom far enough to clap Steve on the shoulder.

"I'll leave you and your weapons kink alone then, shall I?"

Steve throws a roll of bandages at her and shouts: "Bring us coffee!"

Mare just flips him off over her shoulder, and keeps walking, pulling a still sputtering Danny after her.

In the bathtub, Kono has her eyes closed again, and the water swirling around her legs is a rusty red. Moving slowly, so he doesn't get shanked, Steve reaches for a cloth and wets it. He cleans Kono's wounds carefully, hyper aware of the warm skin beneath his hands. He cleans the blood from Kono's arms and gravel and dirt from the cuts on her feet. There are bruises blooming on Kono's hips and back that he ghosts the cloth over and pretends he doesn't notice when Kono hisses and jerks away from the pain.

He unhooks the showerhead from the wall and runs it over his fingers to test the temperature, before pressing gently at the back of Kono's neck so she doesn't get water in her eyes.

Kono, warm and pliable and mostly clean, leans forward agreeably and sighs quietly when Steve lets the water run over the crown of her head, and through her hair. It takes a while for the water to run clear, to get rid of the mud and plaster and blood, but Steve moves patiently, using his fingers to comb Kono's hair. He's done this before, for Mare, when she was young and stupid and constantly getting herself into fights that she couldn't finish. Thank god she met Danny to keep her remotely grounded.

When he's done, he switches the water off and hands Kono a towel.

"I should bandage that cut on your shoulder," he says, quietly, holding out his hands for Kono to use to extricate herself from the bathtub.

Kono looks at his hands warily, but holds onto them when her knees buckle as she stands. Her grip is shaky, but still strong.

"I can do it myself," Kono says, stiffer and far less pliable now that she's out of the bathtub and standing (mostly) on her own.

"You're dead on your feet," Steve says, reaching for the bandages that Danny left on the bathroom sink. "And if you try to bandage your own shoulder you'll only stretch the wound wider and end up with an infection."

"That's never happened before," Kono drawls with sarcasm, removing her hands from Steve's and swaying slightly on her feet, but remaining upright. Steve rolls his eyes.

"Will you please just let me help you?"

Kono's shoulders go uncomfortably stiff at that, and she looks away.

"I can't afford to owe anyone any favours," she says, quietly.

Steve shakes his head forcefully and puts the bandages back in the sink, reaching for Kono, and curling his hands up when she jerks away.

"I'm not doing this so you'll lend me your favourite rocket launcher when I need to take out a small European country," Steve says, pushing his hands into his hair in exasperation. "You don't have to pay me back, except maybe by not stealing all of my shit in the morning. Or like, not putting a knife to my throat. Again. I'm doing this because I heard you were in trouble, and you don't deserve to be shot in a warehouse in Birmingham by some asshole gangster."

Kono raises an eyebrow at him, but she's smiling, a little bit, and listing slightly to the side again. Steve reaches over and steadies her with two big hands on slim shoulders, and Kono lets him.

"As far as romantic declarations go," Kono says, later, when she sits on the closed toilet seat, letting Steve dab iodine against the cut on her head, "that was one of the strangest I've ever had. _You are_ one of the strangest I've ever had. People generally lose interest when they find out that I've stolen their passport and their shoes."

"My sister and I are made of stubborn stock," Steve says, pressing butterfly closures against the cut on Kono's head and stepping back to study his handiwork. "My father chased our mother across two continents before she agreed to marry him. Mare was supposed to take out competition but ended up following Danny for months and then she decided that he worth more alive and well, you saw the result."

Kono laughs quietly, running clever fingers over the closures on her head and the bandage on her shoulder.

"It runs in the family, then," she smiles. "The chasing."

"We know what we like," Steve says, shrugging. "And we don't let distance deter us."

"I can see that," Kono nods. "Distance, or a knife to the throat, nothing stops you."

She's smirking, and Steve tucks the bandages and the iodine back beneath the bathroom sink and points at her.

"I walked all across Shibuya for you," he says, and Kono shrugs, still smiling.

"I never asked you to fly to Tokyo for me."

"Jesus Christ, you two make me sick." Mary Ann sticks her head into the bathroom, scowling. "Is there blood in the bathtub? I'd really like to take a shower without getting someone else's blood on me."

Steve stretches out a hand to help Kono up, and they move out of the small bathroom. Mary Ann leers at him behind Kono's back as they go, and Steve does his best to ignore her. He leads Kono into his bedroom, and helps her in to the bed, refraining from tucking her in only because Danny would never let him live it down.

"You know where the bathroom is," Steve says. "I'll be on the couch if you need anything, just shout."

Kono nods, her fingers skimming across the bedspread and the sheets, and her eyes taking in the crowded bookshelf, the Guns and Ammo magazines on the floor, the dart board and the post cards tacked to the wall of Steve's room. Steve waits for another moment, and then leaves her to it, closing the door softly, and joining Danny with a couple of beers on the couch.

"So I can see why you like her," Danny says, quietly, when their beers are half gone. "She's stubborn, suicidal and batshit crazy, just like you."

Steve shoves at him half-heartedly, and Danny laughs loudly, and then covers his mouth, glancing at Steve's closed bedroom door.

"She's good at what she does," Steve says, and Danny nods, taking a long swig of his beer and letting his head drop back on the couch.

"I liked the part where she hid a knife in her hair," Danny grins. "Anyone with knives in their hair gets my blessing."

Steve laughs this time, and gets up to get them both another beer.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing you recognize…

**A/N:** So this is the end, thank you for taking this crazy mirror universe ride with me, all the reviews and favs.

I have another AU idea, kinda similar to this where Steve is a hitman for a secret government agency and Kono is his mark and of course stupidly in love crazyness happens. Are you interested?

Tell me what you think!

* * *

_Kiss like a fight that neither wins_  
_One tender payment for our sins_  
_You are the drug that I can't quit_  
_Your perfect chaos is a perfect fit_

_So I, get on the road and ride to you_  
_I get on the road and ride to you_  
_/Tired Pony/_

…

Kono is out for fourteen hours straight.

Steve sleeps on the couch, half-collapsed on top of Danny, who elbows him in the kidneys and refuses to make room for him. Mary Ann grumbles and throws everything within her reach at them.

Every few hours, Steve gets up to check on Kono, to make sure she's still there, and that she hasn't climbed out of the window with his laptop and wallet.

When she does finally wake up, it's eight o'clock the next morning, and Steve is making coffee and scrambled eggs in his kitchen and singing along to some terrible old rock song on the radio. He doesn't even notice that Kono is watching him until she steps into the kitchen and one of the floorboards creaks beneath her bare feet. Steve does not shriek and grab for a knife, but it's a close thing.

Kono, wearing one of Steve's old t-shirts, and a pair of his jogging bottoms, rolled up twice, smiles sleepily at him, and it's like the sun has risen all over again.

"Was that Bon Jovi?" She asks, jerking her head at the radio and Steve flushes and turns back to the eggs before they burn.

"Shut up," he mutters. "Danny tortures me with that crap all the time. It's quite catchy after the eighty-sixth time actually. Coffee or tea?"

"Coffee," Kono grins. "And some eggs, if there's enough?"

Steve nods, already reaching into the refrigerator for the rest of the eggs and cheese. He puts another couple of slices of bread in the toaster as well, and pushes gently against her back until she sits down at the kitchen table. When the coffee has brewed he pours a mug-full for Kono and sets out cream and the chipped sugar bowl, before turning back to the scrambled eggs with his own coffee.

"How's the shoulder?" He asks picking up the spatula to make sure the cheese melts evenly into the scrambled eggs. "And the head?"

"Sore," Kono mumbles, and when Steve sneaks a glance at her from over his shoulder, she's got her face buried in the coffee mug.

"You can stay here for as long as you'd like," Steve offers, like it's not a huge deal for him, grabbing the toast when it pops up and buttering it quickly. "As long as you need."

He has the toast on plates and the eggs salted and peppered and spooned onto the plates beside the toast before Kono speaks again. She says thank you, very, very quietly, and more to the coffee than to Steve, but it's there, and he beams soppily at her and hands her the larger portion of eggs and toast.

They eat in silence, Steve watching every move she makes for any signs of pain, and Kono with single-minded focus. She digs into the eggs and toast with gusto, and finishes before Steve's eaten half of his. She puts his fork down sheepishly when Steve looks at her empty plate, but Steve just grins and stands up, opening the fridge to dig out the rest of the eggs, and put more bread into the toaster.

"It's really good," Kono says when he turns the hob back on and rescues the pan from the sink. "I never imagined you as a cook."

Steve turns around at that. "What did you imagine me as?"

Kono actually flushes, and Steve nearly burns his hand on the stove at the sight. "I just never thought that a gun-for-hire would spend his mornings making scrambled eggs and filling in the crossword puzzle."

Steve laughs, and cracks three more eggs into the pan, then reaches into the fridge for the cheese.

When they're done with breakfast, Steve changes the bandage on Kono's shoulder and steals some clothes from the luggage Mary Ann's left in the corner of his living room, and shows her how to use the shower. He tidies aimlessly while Kono is in the shower, folds Danny and Mary Ann's clothes for them and straightens the blankets on the couch before sending Jenna a panicked text.

'_She's wounded and staying in my flat and I just made her two plates of scrambled eggs for breakfast. Unsure of how to proceed?'_

Less than a minute later, Jenna sends him a text full of overexcited keysmashing, and then: _SEDUCE HER_, which is quickly followed up with _AND THEN TELL ME EVERYTHING_. And then: _'Take her to the tower of London! You can bond over workplace violence and make out in all the dark corners!'_

Steve turns his phone off after that.

They don't go to the Tower of London, because when Kono gets out of the shower she looks exhausted again, and Steve gets her a cup of tea and closes the door when Kono falls asleep in his bed again. He's turning into his mother.

Mary Ann and Danny show up later that afternoon with the news that they've found a flat in London to stay at until they pick up another job. They collect their shit and hug Steve, and Mare makes a number of increasingly lewd hand gestures until Steve is forced to shut the door in her face.

In the evening, he orders a takeout from his favourite Thai place, and is just sitting down in front of his curry and pad thai when the door to his room opens up and Kono pads out. She's sleep-mussed and if Steve didn't know that she stole things and stabbed people who got in her way for a living, he'd call her adorable.

"Hungry?" Steve asks, lifting his carton of pad thai. "I ordered enough for a small army."

Kono smiles, unguarded and tousled, and Steve's heart swells a bit in his chest. He puts his chopsticks down to massage at it, and shifts backwards so that Kono can fit on the couch along with him.

"I feel nearly human again," Kono tells him, reaching carefully for a container of tom kha gai. Steve pushes the fried rice and half of the pad thai at her surreptitiously, and she smiles at him.

"I haven't felt so rested in years," Kono tells him, fixing her eyes on the television, where Steve had started watching Dune a little while ago, for lack of anything better to do.

"That's the only reason they got the drop on me," she continues after a minute, through a mouthful of curry, and Steve turns to look at her over the container of fried rice he's eating. "I'm better than that, usually."

Kono puts her curry down and swipes the back of her hand over her mouth quickly.

"I was just too tired to even notice that I was being followed." She looks down, twisting nervous fingers in her lap. "It's hard, doing all this on your own, sometimes. I don't know how you do it."

"I'm never on my own," Steve says, "not really. When I first started, Mary Ann and I worked together. Saved each others' asses a few times. Still do, actually. And then Mare found someone she wanted to work with, and I ran with them for a while, before I decided that I'd be better on my own. There's only so much time I can spend in hotel rooms with my sister and her husband without wanting to murder them both. But even on my own, I've got people who have my back. I've got a contact in Paris who supplies me with information. She doesn't come on jobs with me, but if I didn't have her, I'd probably get shot three times a week. She actually... she told me where you were."

"Do I know her?" Kono frowns.

"No, no." Steve laughs. "But I know her, and I know you, and when she figured out that you'd been pulled out of your flat at something like three in the morning she called me."

"And you came in, guns blazing, to rescue me," Kono drawls, and she's smiling, and she smiles even wider when Steve winks at her. They smile at each other for a minute, before Kono huffs with laughter and looks down. "You've got too big of a heart for this business."

She sounds like she doesn't agree with being so open-hearted with his friends and family and then turning around and murdering people for a living, but she also sounds a little bit envious, and Steve reaches out with careful fingers and links his fingers with the hand that Kono's not using to hold her chopsticks. She tightens her fingers around Steve's, holding on like it's a lifeline.

"I always thought it was a waste," Kono says, staring stubbornly at the television. "I've lost too many people to open myself up to that kind of hurt again."

"It's a risk," Steve says, slowly. "And don't think that I sleep soundly every day my little sister and my best friend are on a job that might get them killed. I hate knowing that I could lose either or both of them, or that they'd get in trouble, and I'd be a continent away, and not able to get to them in time."

He takes a deep breath and squeezes Kono's fingers again. "But I think it would be worse if I cut myself off from them completely. They are family, and I love them, no matter how much shit they pull. My life would be a lot quieter if it didn't have them in it."

Kono's palm slides against his, a little sweaty, and shaking slightly.

"And if I wasn't in your life?" She asks, voice soft against the hum of noise from the television.

"If you weren't in my life my life would probably be a whole lot quieter, too." Steve says, smirking, and Kono's lips quirk gently.

"I wouldn't know what Shibuya was like at rush hour. Or that you can hide knives in your hair and kill a man with a coat hanger, if you really want to." He shrugs. "You're also the most beautiful art thief I've ever met. And you're stubborn as shit, and if you go down, you go down fighting and I respect that. My life would be pretty boring without you in it."

Kono looks at him, finally, and her hand opens and closes nervously in Steve's. "I'm really fucking bad at this," she says, biting her lips.

"You know, I noticed that the first time we slept together and you stole all my shit," Steve says, and Kono cracks a smile.

She leans in, very carefully, and kisses Steve.

"I nearly climbed out of the window earlier," Kono says, when they pull away, still half in Steve's lap. "But I thought I should at least say goodbye, and then when I came out of the room you were watching a terrible science fiction movie, and offered me pad thai."

Steve means to argue with her about Dune being more than a terrible science fiction movie, but what comes out of his mouth is: "Please don't climb out of the window again."

Kono looks away and sits back, so Steve moves forward, to pull her back into his lap. "If you're going to run away again, at least tell me? You owe me that much. Don't just disappear."

Kono nods, and leans forwards to kiss Steve again.

They fall asleep in Steve's bed that night, and he wakes up in the middle of the night when Kono curls fitfully into his side. She wakes up before Steve does in the morning, and she smiles nervously while he runs a hand over his face and grins at her before pushing her back among the pillows, careful to avoid her injured shoulder.

They shower together when they manage to get out of bed, and Steve makes them pancakes, despite the fact that it's nearly lunchtime. Kono gets jumpy in the afternoon, and they get dressed, Kono in Mary Ann's stolen jeans and one of Steve's hoodies that is far too large for her. They take the Tube to the centre of London and buy overpriced cups of coffee at a stand along the Thames, and walk along the river until the sun sets.

Steve tries to hold Kono's hand but she goes stiff and awkward, so he tucks his hand in his pocket and curls it into a fist. Kono sits right beside him when they take the Tube back to Steve's flat, as if to apologize, and she kisses him when they get back inside the flat.

Steve falls asleep uneasily that night, with Kono tucked against his side, and when he wakes up in the pale grey light of another rainy London morning, Kono is gone.

The worst part about it is the way he's not even surprised.

He takes a long shower and nearly misses the note on the kitchen table when he turns the kettle on to make himself a cup of coffee. It's written hastily in the margins of yesterday's newspaper and says:

_I told you I was bad at this. I need some time. Don't wait for me…I'll find you. Thanks for the rescue, the home, and the pad thai._

Kono's handwriting is spiky and disjointed, unpredictable, and Steve abandons the coffee in favour of the bottle of aged scotch he hides under the sink.

.

.

"I'll garrote her for you," Mare offers over the phone from where she and Danny are on a job in Spain. Steve just laughs and brushes her off.

"It's okay."

"It's really _not_."

"She never promised me anything, Mare."

Danny swears loudly, colourfully, and at length from the background, and Steve sighs and would laugh if everything didn't feel a little bit sore from not enough sleep and a little too much scotch. He's itching for a job, but he knows that Mary Ann called Jenna and told her to keep Steve in London to keep him sane, until he gets over…whatever Kono was.

A one-night stand, a long-distance romance, a lot of misguided pining, and a rescue mission, respectively.

He's been spending a lot of time simply walking, mapping the streets in his neighbourhood, and taking the Tube until he gets tired of swaying with the motion of the train and gets out to walk some more. He likes walking on Hampstead Heath best, because the heath gets deserted in the early autumn chill, and he likes the view from the top of the hill, where you can look out over all of London.

Kono is waiting for him at the top of the heath one morning, exactly three weeks after she had disappeared from Steve's flat. She's sitting on the bench at the top of the heath that Steve favours, with two cups of coffee, still steaming in the cold air. She looks the way she did when Steve ran into her on a bridge in France. The cut on her head has healed, and she's wearing a leather jacket, and a thick blood-red scarf, with that same pair of designer boots.

Steve stops walking, and just stares. It takes Kono a moment to notice him, but when she does she jumps up, tamps out her cigarette in the dirt by the bench and closes her hands nervously on empty air.

"I brought you coffee," she says, after a minute of silence, and offers it tentatively. "I have to tell you something, and I thought you'd be more likely to stay and listen to me if I brought you coffee. You can leave, though, if you want, I'm not… I wouldn't try to keep you here."

She coughs awkwardly and gestures with the coffee cup slightly manically. "I also thought that I'd let you punch me in the face, if you wanted to. I deserve it."

"My sister offered to garrote you," Steve says, conversationally, and takes the coffee from Kono's hands. "I didn't hear what Danny said in the background but it wasn't something pleasant either,I'm sure."

Kono touches her neck absently. "I probably deserve that, too."

"It's okay, though," Steve shrugs and it almost doesn't hurt when he says it. "You never promised me anything. I was foolish to even hope."

"You're not foolish," Kono says, sticking one hand in her pocket to fumble for her cigarettes.

"You're incredibly fucking stubborn, and you believed in me even though I did my best to not give you anything to believe in. That's not foolishness," she says, a strange smile playing on her mouth as she lights her cigarette. "That's bravery."

Kono exhales a pale stream of smoke, and looks at Steve's fingers around his coffee cup, the old sweater he's wearing, the stubble on his cheeks – anywhere but his eyes.

"And I thought you were a crazy person at first, because I left you in Paris, but then you just kept showing up. And I never gave you any reason to keep coming back, and you still showed up, in a suit in goddamn Birmingham to help me, and you opened up your house and fed me, and it's always been so complicated in this life, to be involved with other people, but it was so easy with you that I had to get out again."

Her hands are shaking badly, now, and she ashes her cigarette so forcefully that the coal glows fiercely in the cold.

"It's like what we were talking about," she whispers. "What's the point of getting involved with people you could just lose in an instant, courtesy of a stray bullet, or a job gone south? And then, I couldn't stop thinking about how if you never got involved with people, what was the point of sticking around? Being lonely is about as miserable as losing someone, so why not be happy while you can?"

Steve sets his coffee down carefully on the ground, because he's not sure what his heart is doing. It's jumping around in his chest, trying to escape right through his ribs, and he sticks his hands in his pockets and clenches them into fists to stop them from shaking like Kono's are.

"I was going to be dramatic," Kono says in a rush, "and fly to Italy and kiss you in front of the Trevi Fountain, but I got too impatient."

"I'm a little bit confused about what's happening here," Steve says, carefully, and Kono smiles bashfully at the ground.

"About three weeks ago," she begins slowly, "some men dragged me out of my apartment in the middle of the night and tied me to a chair. And then, two days later, you came bursting into the warehouse like a knight in shining fucking armour. And you opened up your home to me, and I realized that I was in love with you, and I panicked and ran off. And I was all ready to take a one-way flight to Spain and never see you again, but I couldn't."

She kicks at the ground and steps closer, cigarette smouldering between two fingers. "I'm in love with you, and all I can think about is how I want to steal priceless works of art for you, and wake up next to you for the rest of my life."

Steve's heart feels like it might explode, and he steps forward, knocking his coffee over his shoes, and the cigarette out of Kono's hand as he reaches for her. They both scramble to stamp out the cigarette, and then laugh straight into each other's mouths when they finally manage to meet in the middle.

Steve kisses Kono like he's drowning, and Kono kisses him back just as desperately, her fingers digging into Steve's arms through his coat.

When they pull away to catch their breaths, Steve leans down to rest his forehead against Kono's. The art thief smiles brilliantly at him, and stands on her toes to whisper into his ear:

"Hi, my name is Kono. I was born and raised in Hawaii and I wanted to be a pro surfer until my accident. I steal art for a living, I keep straight blades in my hair and I love you."

Steve grins against her lips and tightens his arms around her, feeling like he'd finally found home.


End file.
